Around 1400 or so many buried statues and other treasures from ancient Rome were found, and this stimulated an interest in the numerous ruins and in finding more artifacts. Cosimo de Medici used his great wealth to finance part of this effort. The effort extended to finding forgotten ancient manuscripts in various abbeys and monasteries, and this effort was successful too. When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, many Greek scholars fled to Italy, where they helped Italians translate previously unknown manuscripts from Plato.
This stimulated a deep interest in Latin literature, especially its pagan literature. Erasmus developed a highly lucid and fluent Latin style that was greatly admired, and his humanist teachings reached many ears. "In Praise of Folly" is still a classic.
Along with this came a new interest in the pagan gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome, and soon the mark of a gentleman was that he knew well the ancient myths. This in turn stimulated non-Christian art such as Botticelli's "Birth of Venus". Macchiavelli drew on the classical authors Livy and Tacitus to write his own history of Italy, and upon the political theories of Aristotle to compose the first secular work of political philosophy since ancient times, "The Prince". The new interest in the ruins was a great stimulus to architecture as well, and led directly to the building of St. Peter's Cathedral.
